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Psychiatric nurses demonstrate over shortage of medicines

Nurses at the Accra Psychiatric Hospital have threatened to embark on strike by the end of this week over what they described as shortage of medicines at the hospital.

The nurses held a protest march Tuesday at the hospital, saying that they were exposed to the dangers associated with treating very aggressive mentally deranged patients without the requisite medicines.

Displaying placards with the inscriptions “No medicine no work”, “No money, no work”, among others, the nurses said several promises by government to provide medicines to the hospital had gone unfulfilled.

Samuel Cudjoe, the District Chairperson of the Ghana Registered Nurses Association, said without medicines to calm down aggressive patients, the nurses would not put their lives at risk.

Mr Cudjoe told Accra-based Citi FM that the nurses would lay down their tools by the end of the week if the situation did not improve, because according to him, there was no insurance or risk allowance for any staff that got injured in the line of duty.

Reacting to the protest, the Chief Psychiatric at the hospital, Dr Akwasi Osei, said the Mental Health Authority had recently given the hospital GH₵150,000  to solve the immediate challenges facing the hospital.

Dr Osei told Citi FM that he had instructed the hospital pharmacist to immediately go and purchase the needed medicines.

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